The odes have poured forth to Jaromir Jagr all season. And though each and every sonnet directed at the fabled No. 68 is richly deserved, so in fact is a larger prize.

For Jagr is not only worthy of admiration, he is in fact worthy of the Hart Trophy as the league’s MVP, 17 years after he won it for the first and only time.

Value is in the eye of the beholder and voter. Remember: The Hart does not necessarily go to the league’s best player, but rather “the player adjudged to be the most valuable to his team.”

Judgement, of course, is rendered on a subjective basis, but go ahead, you tell me: What player in the NHL has been more valuable to his team than Jagr, who is having a Second Career Year and around whom the historically ineffectual Puddy Tats have coalesced to become one of the NHL’s emerging nations?

Dallas’ Jamie Benn is a name that belongs in the hopper, same for Pittsburgh’s Sidney Crosby and Chicago’s Patrick Kane — though is No. 88 more valuable to the Blackhawks than Jonathan Toews?

You want to throw Drew Doughty’s hat into the ring? Be my guest. You could make a case for Washington’s Braden Holtby, but on a team with Alexander Ovechkin and Evgeny Kuznetsov, is the goaltender the Capitals’ MVP? Maybe, but maybe not.

There are no maybes with Jagr. Roberto Luongo has had a good year, there’s young speed and talent all over the roster, but the Panthers aren’t a playoff team, let alone a division champion, without The Jagr Phenomenon.

The 44-year-old has elevated his team in much the same way he elevated the Rangers 10 years ago, when he carried a Blueshirts team expected to finish in the NHL’s bottom five to its first playoff berth after seven straight misses. Jagr established franchise records with 54 goals and 123 points and had led the league in goals and points until the final week, when he and his team faltered.

If the 34-year-old Jagr had the same folk-hero aura then as he does now, he would have won the Hart in a landslide. But then often sullen, hardly a media favorite (except among the writers who covered him every day of the season), and not all that far removed from his experience in Washington that left a bad taste in everybody’s mouth, Jagr was denied the Hart while Joe Thornton, who won the Art Ross with 125 points after having been traded earlier in the season from Boston to San Jose, won it, and in balloting that was scandalously one-sided.

Now, a decade later, Jagr has twisted the narrative his way, and in doing so, he has taken his team and impressionable young teammates with him. These Panthers still would be young and talented without Jagr, but they wouldn’t be contenders. They wouldn’t be a playoff team without their leading scorer.

This isn’t about The Jagr Phenomenon recording 27 goals and 65 points at his age (though, of course, on some level it is). This is about Jagr leading a division champion in scoring. This is about recognizing Jagr for what he has done this year, and that would (and should) be as the Hart Trophy winner as the NHL’s Most Valuable Player.

Ken HollandAP

Detroit always has been able to get it done it from within — the scouting and development wings of the organization providing a steady feeder system to the NHL that eliminated the need to procure high-priced free agents. Indeed, the Red Wings have signed just one marquee free agent in his prime during the hard cap era, and that was Marian Hossa in 2008 — who signed a cap-friendly, one-year deal before moving onto Chicago on a lucrative, front-loaded, long-term deal.

So as the homegrown veterans invariably retire or recede in value and the roster becomes depleted, it’s fair to wonder whether general manager Ken Holland, whose team has won one playoff series the past four years and three over the past six, will necessarily jump into the deep end of the pool this summer and court Steven Stamkos.

Sorry, but this was as pedestrian of an NHL season as I can recall — a faded-watercolor year that produced few memories and served as a reminder that parity is just another word for absence of excellence.

Meanwhile, let’s not forget that 91 is the new 82. For 91 represents the average NHL points per team. In other words, no matter how the league wants to twist the definition of .500 through inclusion of the subversive loser’s point, if you finish with fewer than 91 points, you’re sub-average.

And if you win 35 out of 81, as the Candy Canes of Carolina had entering Saturday, no, nobody except the NHL PR office and maybe your own season subscribers regards you as a .500 team.

So who makes the playoff first, Lou Lamoriello or the Devils?

Kept waiting for the guy in charge of the NHL lottery ping-pong balls all these years to be introduced at the Oilers’ bash that closed Rexall on Wednesday, didn’t you?

Just keep this asterisk-worthy tidbit in mind with Braden Holtby entering the weekend one short of tying Martin Brodeur’s record for victories in a season with two games to go: When Brodeur won 48 games in 2006-07, 12 were in overtime or shootout. Holtby has nine OT/SO victories.

But when Bernie Parent won 47 games in 1973-74 to establish the mark, there was no overtime and there was no shootout. Indeed, Parent has 12 ties on his record that year (47-13-12).

So how many games would the ’74 Conn Smythe winner had won if guaranteed tie-breaking procedures had been in place?